Saving money on MacBook battery replacements

Replacing a dead battery can be a costly exercise, especially with Apple laptops. Even those user-serviceable batteries feature a hefty price tag in the Apple store, and on-line merchants aren’t significantly cheaper, either. Add to that the blogosphere’s widespread opinion that Apple’s batteries tend to fail three and a half seconds (on average) after your warranty has run out, and the “rising energy costs” everybody is talking about quickly apply to your very own notebook.

Surprisingly (and here’s the actual informative content of this post), it is cheaper to get an appointment at your local Apple Store’s Genius Bar and have them swap in a replacement battery for you, than actually ordering one from the ‘net (or Apple’s own webstore) and doing it yourself. This, of course, requires that you live somewhere near an Apple Store, which in Germany (unlike the US) is rather unlikely, but it can save you about 25% compared to online prices.

Also, to delay having to drop money on a new battery at all, it might pay off to have a look at Apple’s battery calibration recommendations. I’ll give it a shot in the hope that this one survives more than 111 cylces.